ABSTRACT
In a democracy public schools have the moral mandate to educate all students to high levels of individual competency and to prepare the next generation of citizens for our society. This is the mandate of the Agenda for Education in a Democracy, and it was clearly articulated by the work of John Goodlad and his colleagues over the past thirty years. To accomplish these lofty outcomes, schools also need to be centers of democratic action in the communities they serve. The schools need to develop a public for the public schools, a public that believes in democracy and the role of the schools in realizing its ideals.
